I'm not 100% sure this is actually word-for-word, but alas. "In a presentation at Ubuntu Developer Summit currently going on in Denmark, Drew Bliss from Valve said that Linux is more viable than Windows 8 for gaming. Windows 8 ships with its own app store and it is moving away from an open platform model." I feel like a broken record by now but here we go again: keep an eye on Valve, even if you're not into games. This is the company pushing NVIDIA and AMD to improve their Linux support, with enough clout and name to actually get stuff done. Valve doesn't mess around.

It got a bad name because Ubuntu, as they often do, crammed it in too early and pretty heavily misconfigured for a lot of people's hardware at first; Switching from pure Alsa to pulseaudio also didn't seem to go smoothly for people.

No, it got a bad name because it "fixed" the wrong layer in the audio stack. ALSA is crap. ALSA drivers are crap. ALSA has so many issues with it, that nobody wants to work on it. Instead, everyone layers more bandaids on top, trying to make up for all the crap in ALSA.

The correct solution is to fix ALSA. Then there would be no need for Pulse.

I'm somewhat worried they'll do the same with Wayland; it sounds like they're looking to cram it in sooner than common drivers are ready for it... It's a better infrastructure design too, but yeah

Wayland uses Gallium3D/KMS for drivers. X.org uses (among others) Gallium3D/KMS. IOW, if the driver works with X.org, it'll work with Wayland. Granted, the only Gallium3D/KMS drivers are the OSS ones ...